Daniel has a nice write-up about building his Manhattan style VFD Clock based on the MSP430G2553 microcontroller and the MAX6921:
I know that and IV-18 based clock isn’t anything original. In fact, Adafruit used to sell a kit for this exact purpose. I don’t really care that it’s not original, because all vacuum tubes are cool, and doing all of the work yourself is really much cooler than using a kit. Also, I wanted to try my hand at Manhattan style construction. Manhattan style circuits are built on a copper ground plane, with little islands for every node of the circuit. Because of the ground plane, and because it has fewer parasitics than strip board or perfboard, Manhattan style construction is often used for radio frequency projects. My project isn’t a radio project, and the circuit probably would have worked just fine on a strip board, but Manhattan style construction gives a circuit a crude/retro look, which pairs nicely with a Russian vacuum tube.
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Project info at Daniel’s Electronics blog.
Check out the video after the break.
